The photography is impressive. It turns every surface damp and cold, every texture abrasive. The woods of Onandaga may be dark and deep but they ain't lovely. The forest floor is layered with long-fallen, discarded tannic leaf remnants. The rocks around the waterfall are sharp, the color of onyx. And if I were Nicole Kidman I wouldn't strip and leap naked into that black pool, although I'm happy that she was willing to. The cityscapes are worse. The vast expanse of the brick walls is ugly. The apartment interiors are furnished with stuffed chairs that look stiff and uninviting. And the set designer gives us walls that -- well, as Oscar Wilde said on his deathbed, "Either this wallpaper goes or I do." The Palace chop house in Newark, where Dutch and his gang are finally eliminated, has a brave little neon sign over its window but it still looks like the most dismal saloon in the world. Maybe it's just in the nature of Newark to seem melancholic.
Actually the movie is technically pretty well done. We can more or less follow the antics of Dutch Schultz (Hoffman) as he executes a betrayer (Willis) and adopts his girlfriend (Kidman), as well as a young man he takes a heterosexual fancy to (Dean). There are intermittent flashbacks to Willis's murder. They're terrifying. Willis is taken out into New York harbor on a boat, tied to a chair, his feet encased in a tub of drying cement. And all this time we thought that the feet-in-the-cement business was nothing more than a joke.
The performances are uniformly good. Hoffman is fine as a gangster who has broken his tether and gone wild, despite the warnings of his closest adviser, Steven Hill. Schultz puts his philosophy something like this -- "If I say I'll do somethin', I do it. If I say I won't do somethin', I don't do it. And if anybody gets in my way he knows I'll kill him." Loren Dean is the open-mouthed teenager from the slums who wants desperately to join the gang and winds up with a lot of money and his body parts barely intact. He's kind of clean-cut looking and does a good turn, without any chance for a bravura scene.
Nicole Kidman is a kind of perambulating cat house, a tough cookie with meltingly good looks. "You're Dutch's girl," Dean tells her. "I'm not his girl," she replies. "He's my gangster." That nose of hers. There must be an Intelligent Designer after all, and he's a geometrician who has had a hand in designing that nose. I'm trying to imagine Kidman playing, say, a nun -- but I can't do it. Stanley Tucci is excellent as Lucky Luciano, whom nobody but Arthur Fliegenheimer would want for a compadre.
There's a shocking scene in which Dutch interrupts himself in the middle of a sentence -- with a bullet. A dead man bleeds all over the hotel carpet and it won't come out. So while they're matter-of-factly lugging the body around in a laundry cart they break Dean's nose to provide fresh blood and to provide evidence of an accident for the hotel staff.
It's an intense movie with practically no jokes. I don't know that it adds much to cinematic history but it's a professional piece of work and keeps your interest.
Actually the movie is technically pretty well done. We can more or less follow the antics of Dutch Schultz (Hoffman) as he executes a betrayer (Willis) and adopts his girlfriend (Kidman), as well as a young man he takes a heterosexual fancy to (Dean). There are intermittent flashbacks to Willis's murder. They're terrifying. Willis is taken out into New York harbor on a boat, tied to a chair, his feet encased in a tub of drying cement. And all this time we thought that the feet-in-the-cement business was nothing more than a joke.
The performances are uniformly good. Hoffman is fine as a gangster who has broken his tether and gone wild, despite the warnings of his closest adviser, Steven Hill. Schultz puts his philosophy something like this -- "If I say I'll do somethin', I do it. If I say I won't do somethin', I don't do it. And if anybody gets in my way he knows I'll kill him." Loren Dean is the open-mouthed teenager from the slums who wants desperately to join the gang and winds up with a lot of money and his body parts barely intact. He's kind of clean-cut looking and does a good turn, without any chance for a bravura scene.
Nicole Kidman is a kind of perambulating cat house, a tough cookie with meltingly good looks. "You're Dutch's girl," Dean tells her. "I'm not his girl," she replies. "He's my gangster." That nose of hers. There must be an Intelligent Designer after all, and he's a geometrician who has had a hand in designing that nose. I'm trying to imagine Kidman playing, say, a nun -- but I can't do it. Stanley Tucci is excellent as Lucky Luciano, whom nobody but Arthur Fliegenheimer would want for a compadre.
There's a shocking scene in which Dutch interrupts himself in the middle of a sentence -- with a bullet. A dead man bleeds all over the hotel carpet and it won't come out. So while they're matter-of-factly lugging the body around in a laundry cart they break Dean's nose to provide fresh blood and to provide evidence of an accident for the hotel staff.
It's an intense movie with practically no jokes. I don't know that it adds much to cinematic history but it's a professional piece of work and keeps your interest.